Hardware & Accessory Swaps
Hardware and accessory swaps is the cosmetic-finish trade that closes a kitchen, bath, or entry in one visit — cabinet pulls, towel bars, house numbers, no-wire doorbells, smart locks, soft-close hinges, and mesh Wi-Fi — starting at $100. A box of brushed-brass cabinet pulls bought six months ago and still on the counter. A Schlage Encode smart lock unopened on the entry table because the old deadbolt is stuck. A house-number set leaned against the garage because the screws in the package are not long enough for stucco. Small parts, predictable scope, and a handful of details (template alignment, the right anchor for tile or plaster, lock backset, doorbell field of view) that decide whether the install reads as factory-finished or as "we will redo this later." Handis sends a vetted handyman with the drill bits, anchors, jigs, and patience for every surface in the house.
Services
What Do Hardware & Accessory Swaps Include?
Hardware and accessory swaps are the residential install scope for finish-grade hardware across kitchens, baths, and entries — cabinet knobs and pulls, towel bars and bath accessories, exterior house numbers and mailboxes, no-wire doorbells, retrofit smart locks, soft-close hinge upgrades, and mesh Wi-Fi setup — starting at $100 per piece. The trade turns a house into a finished house — the cabinet pulls that say the kitchen is done, the towel bar anchored into the tile instead of a wall plug that will tear out, the smart lock that opens from a phone, the doorbell that actually shows a wide view of the porch. The work breaks into six service families. Each family has its own pricing, its own anchor kit, and its own quirks. The truck carries diamond-tipped tile bits, drill jigs for cabinet pulls in every common pitch (3 inch, 96 mm, 128 mm, 160 mm, 192 mm), masonry sleeves for brick and stucco, longer-shank toggles for plaster over lath, and the Phillips, square, and security bits the hardware manufacturers ship. Gas, hardwired electrical, and new low-voltage transformer runs live outside this trade — a no-wire battery or smart doorbell is in scope; a hardwired retrofit that needs transformer work routes to a licensed electrician.
Cabinet Knobs & Pulls
Cabinet hardware swap on existing or fresh-drilled doors and drawer fronts. The work that finishes a kitchen renovation when the cabinets came from the factory drilled for a 3-inch pitch and the pulls you bought are 96 mm on center. We use a drill jig clamped to every door, mark twice before drilling, and run a backer block behind the door to keep the bit from blowing out the back face. Per-piece pricing for small swaps and whole-kitchen pricing for a full set. From $150.
Cabinet Knobs & Pulls — drilled templates, per-piece, whole-kitchen sets
Towel Bars, Hooks & Bath Accessories
Towel bars, robe hooks, toilet paper holders, glass shelves, and shower caddies — anchored into the tile, the stud, or rated blocking behind the wall. The classic failure here is a wall-plug pulled out of drywall the first time a wet towel pulls on the bar. We drill the tile with a diamond bit, anchor into the stud where the stud sits behind the tile, and use rated heavy-duty toggles where the stud does not. From $120.
Towel Bars, Hooks & Bath Accessories — bath hardware on tile, stud, or rated anchor
House Numbers & Mailbox
Curb-appeal hardware — the address plaque that finally lets the delivery driver find the house, the mailbox that replaces the one the snowplow knocked over last winter, the bronze or matte-black house numbers that match the new front door. Post-mount on a pressure-treated 4x4, wall-mount on siding, brick, or stucco, with the right fastener for each. From $100.
House Numbers & Mailbox — wall and post mount, curb-appeal hardware
Doorbell — Battery & Smart, No-Wire
Battery and smart-wireless doorbells — Ring Battery Doorbell, Nest Doorbell (battery), eufy Wireless, Arlo Wireless. The full no-wire scope: location pick for camera field of view, drill the mounting plate into the door casing or siding, pair to home Wi-Fi, set up motion zones, walk the household through the app. No existing doorbell wiring required. If your install needs a 16–24V transformer pulled in or upgraded for a hardwired model, we tell you on the call and route that portion to a licensed electrician. From $120.
Doorbell — Battery & Smart, No-Wire — Ring, Nest, eufy, Arlo wireless
Smart Lock Installation
Retrofit smart-lock install on the existing deadbolt — Schlage Encode, August Smart Lock, Yale Assure, Level Bolt. We verify door thickness, backset (2-3/8 inch or 2-3/4 inch), and bore-hole diameter before the new hardware comes out of the box, swap the deadbolt, pair the lock to Wi-Fi or the home hub, program four to six access codes, and test the lock from outside the door (not just from the hallway). From $150.
Smart Lock Installation — Schlage Encode, August, Yale, Level retrofit
Hinge & Soft-Close Upgrades
Whole-kitchen conversion from worn or bare-metal cabinet hinges to European concealed hinges with built-in soft-close — or a retrofit soft-close damper add-on where the existing hinges are still good. The work that turns a 1990s slam-shut kitchen into a quiet, soft-landing kitchen in one visit. Includes drawer-glide soft-close upgrade (under-mount Blum or Salice glides) where compatible. From $400 for a partial conversion to $1,200 for a full kitchen of 25 to 35 doors and drawers.
Hinge & Soft-Close Upgrades — European concealed hinges, soft-close drawer glides
Wi-Fi & Mesh Network Setup
Mesh Wi-Fi system install and node placement (eero, Google Nest Wifi, Netgear Orbi, TP-Link Deco, Linksys Velop, Asus), router WPA3 and guest network configuration, smart-home device onboarding to the right band, parental controls, and dead-zone troubleshooting with a measured room-by-room signal test. The smart-home and access-hardware sibling to the doorbell and smart-lock work on this hub. From $160.
Wi-Fi & Mesh Network Setup — eero, Nest, Orbi, Deco, Velop, room-by-room tested
Hardware & Accessory Swaps Pricing
Final pricing depends on the count of items, the wall or door material, and whether any existing hardware needs to be removed or holes filled. Each sub-category page lists detailed pricing for that family of work. Multi-area visits are cheaper per item than booking each one separately. Request a free estimate for an accurate quote.
Send us the boxes — pulls, towel bars, smart lock, doorbell — and we will quote the full visit.
Why Homeowners Book Handis for Hardware Swaps
Most hardware-swap calls fail the same way. A cabinet pull drilled freehand off a tape measure is a quarter-inch off on door six and obvious by door ten. A towel bar set into a wall plug that came with the package pulls out of drywall the first time a wet bath sheet hangs on it. A smart lock installed without verifying the backset binds in the strike plate. A doorbell mounted at the wrong height aims its camera at a porch ceiling instead of a delivery driver. After a few thousand hardware swaps across kitchens, baths, and entries, every one of those failure modes has a fix in the truck — a drill jig that keeps every pull on the same line, a diamond tile bit so the anchor lands in the stud behind the tile, a backset gauge that catches the door spec before the new hardware comes out of the box, and a height-and-angle protocol for doorbell cameras.
Drill jigs on every cabinet pull, every time
Pulls drilled freehand off a tape measure drift a sixteenth-inch per door and the drift compounds across a kitchen. We clamp a drill jig (Kreg or Rockler) to every door and drawer front, indexed off the same reference edge, with a backer block behind the face to stop blow-out. The pulls end up on the same horizontal line, the same offset from the edge, the same fit-and-finish a factory would ship.
Right anchor for tile, plaster, stud, or blocking
Bath hardware fails when a wall plug from the package gets pushed into drywall behind tile and the screw lands in nothing. We drill the tile with a diamond-tipped bit, locate the stud behind it, and anchor the bar flange into wood whenever the stud lines up. When the stud does not, we use rated heavy-duty toggles (Toggler Snaptoggle or equivalent — 75 lb minimum) sized to the bar's load. The bar holds a wet towel for years, not weeks.
Smart locks tested from outside the door, not from the hallway
A smart lock that pairs with the app but binds in the strike plate from the porch is not installed. We verify the backset and the door thickness before the hardware comes out of the box, swap the deadbolt, set four to six access codes (family members plus a guest code), and stand on the porch to test app-unlock, keypad-unlock, and auto-lock at the actual distance you will use it.
Doorbell height and angle picked for the porch you actually have
A wireless doorbell mounted at 48 inches with no horizontal tilt aims the camera at a porch ceiling and shows a UPS driver's hat instead of their face. We pick the mounting height for the typical visitor's chest, angle the camera 10 to 15 degrees down where the package or the visitor will land, set motion zones so the camera does not alert on every car on the street, and walk the household through the app.
Insured, background-checked, 30-day workmanship guarantee
Every Handis handyman carries liability insurance and has cleared a background screening before the first job — and any work that puts hardware at your front door (smart locks, exterior keypads, doorbell cameras) is treated as access-sensitive work end-to-end. If a pull goes crooked, a towel bar pulls out, a smart lock binds, a doorbell loses Wi-Fi pairing, or a hinge starts squeaking again within 30 days because of our workmanship, we come back and fix it at no extra charge.
Estimate
List the items, the rooms, and any specifics you know — cabinet count and pull pitch, towel bar wall type, smart lock brand, doorbell brand, kitchen door count — and we will send back a clear estimate for the full visit.
What Our Customers Say
Recent hardware and accessory swap reviews from verified customers.
Kitchen finish-out after the cabinet guys left. Sixty cabinet pulls, twenty knobs, all brushed brass at 96 mm on center on doors that had been drilled at 3 inch by the factory. The tech filled the old holes, jig-drilled every door, and ran the new pulls on a single horizontal line that I can sight down. Looks like the kitchen was built for the new hardware.
Master bath remodel after the tile guy. Towel bar over the tub, robe hook on the back of the door, toilet paper holder beside the toilet, glass shelf above the vanity. He drilled the tile with a diamond bit, found a stud for the towel bar, used rated toggles where the stud did not line up. Six months in, the wet bath sheet has not pulled anything out.
Schlage Encode smart lock and a Ring Battery Doorbell installed in one visit. He checked the door spec before opening the lock box, swapped the deadbolt, set four codes for our family plus a guest code, and stood on the porch to test the lock and the doorbell from where I would actually use them. The doorbell motion zone is set so I do not get a phone alert every time a car drives by.
Whole-kitchen hinge swap on a 1996 kitchen that slammed every door. Twenty-eight doors and seven drawers — converted every hinge to European concealed soft-close, added soft-close glides on the drawers. The kitchen feels brand new and you can close a cabinet at 11 pm without waking anyone. Took most of a day, worth it.
New house, new house numbers and a new mailbox. The stucco wall on the front of the house had eaten the screws from the package — too short and too thin. The tech used the right masonry sleeve, drilled the stucco without cracking it, and set the post for the mailbox in the right depth so it will not lean. Delivery drivers find us now.
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about hardware and accessory swaps — pricing, scope, materials, anchors, and what to expect.